by Mia Archer
"Can I help you?" she asked, hitting me with a smile that was nothing like the weird looks she hit me with in the past. Or in the future. Whatever the hell it was.
This whole time travel thing was confusing. It was a wonder Michael J. Fox or Tom Baker or any of them ever managed to keep anything straight.
"Yeah, I'm sort of looking for someone? Is Jenny around?"
The lady had been giving me a not unkind look before, but suddenly she was giving me a look that… Well it wasn't exactly unkind, but it was a little more curious than before. The kind of look a parent gives someone who shows up asking for their daughter. Even though I was a girl asking for her daughter and it could’ve been totally innocent.
Maybe this woman knew about Jenny. Maybe she didn't. Either way, given the rude awakenings I'd already had in this time period, I had no intention of letting any cats out of any bags on Jenny’s behalf if I could avoid it.
The woman kept up her scrutiny for another few seconds, then turned and shouted over her shoulder.
"Jenny! You have a visitor!”
Well okay then. I was in. Maybe. Sort of.
There was a bustle from a room behind the ticket booth. I’d never noticed that before. Then again, the only time I'd ever gotten a look at the ticket booth was in the future, so maybe that door wasn't there in my time. Or maybe I'd been so preoccupied with paying and getting into the place that I hadn't looked.
Jenny appeared a moment later, looking just a little confused.
"Who's asking for…"
She trailed off as she saw me. I gave her a hesitant little wave. I figured there was a good chance she’d be really pissed off about the way I left her the last time around. After all, I'd stormed off and disappeared after leaving her to the wolves. Where "the wolves" were my mother and maybe my father.
I figured she had every reason to be good and pissed off at me for what I'd done to her, but instead her face split into a huge grin and she disappeared back into that office.
"Well then," the lady said. "It would seem my daughter is happy to see you."
Again she hit me with one of those sly looks that had me thinking she might know a little something about what was going on between me and her daughter. One of those looks that said she knew I was sniffing around because I was interested in her daughter in a more than friendly sort of way, and I'd better watch myself if I knew what was good for me.
It was enough to make me wonder if the weird looks I was getting from this lady in the future were because I bore such a close resemblance to a strange girl who'd come around asking about her daughter nearly two decades prior.
A door opened to the side. Of course. The door all those pictures were surrounding. At least all the pictures surrounded that door in the future. They only went from the concession stand to the door in the here and now.
Jenny wrapped me in a huge hug. Then she really surprised me with her strength as she picked me up and twirled me around.
When she put me down I almost expected her to lean in for a kiss, but she glanced at the window to the ticket office. I didn't see her mom in there watching us, at least I assumed that lady was her mom, but that didn't mean she wasn't in there keeping an eye on things. If I had a daughter and she had some stranger coming around asking about her, well I’d be a little suspicious of that person too.
"Does she know?" I asked.
Jenny sighed. "I think she does now. I mean I haven't told her anything, but she sure suspects."
"Got it," I said. "Because she was giving me some funny looks."
"Was she?" Jenny said. “Well in that case fuck it, it’s not like she has a problem with that sort of thing.”
She leaned in and gave me a kiss. It was a quick kiss. A peck on the lips, really, but it was enough to curl my toes.
"That was nice," I said. "I really missed that!"
"Really?" she asked. "How could you miss something if you've only been gone for a couple of days?"
I grinned. That was a nice confirmation of something I'd been wondering. I hadn't quite figured out how the time travel rules worked for this little back and forth I’d been doing. I’d done some research, but it was difficult considering all the so-called "expertise" on the subject was from fiction or boring papers about black hole event horizons.
Basically, if there was anyone out there who’d actually traveled through time like I was, they were keeping their mouths shut about it.
"What's that funny look for?" she asked.
“Huh?”
“You’re doing that thing where you go all quiet and thoughtful,” she said.
“Oh, sorry. You just confirmed that I'm on San Dimas Time," I said.
She cocked an eyebrow. "You mean like in Bill and Ted?"
Now it was my turn to look surprised. "You’ve heard of Bill and Ted?"
"Well duh,” she said. "That movie was pretty good! I saw in the theaters!"
Of course. I’d grown up with a lot of the movies I liked because my mom and Aunt Olivia had raised me on them. Almost as though they were preparing me for this moment when I found myself thrust back in time.
Jenny was living those movies because they were the new thing teenagers went to see. It was a weird juxtaposition compared to people my age in my time who’d probably heard of these movies because they were on T-shirts and stuff, but never got around to actually watching them because they were old.
"So how did you get out here on a weeknight?" she asked.
I really didn’t want to go into that. The car I drove here in the far future obviously wasn't going to be out in the parking lot tonight. It also occurred to me that maybe the weird looks I got from Jenny’s mom weren’t because I was obviously hitting on her daughter so much as because she hadn’t seen me come in.
"I had someone drop me off," I said, hoping that would be enough to head off any suspicion.
That seemed safe enough. Someone dropping me off would mean she wouldn't expect me to have a car out in the parking lot that wouldn't be manufactured for another sixteen years or so.
"Really?" she said. "And how did you manage to get in without me seeing you? I've been sitting in the office playing in the new Mario game most of the night.”
"The new Mario game?" I asked, immediately going to one of the new Mario party games in my head, even though I knew those games didn’t exist in this day and age.
"Well duh,” she said. "Maybe we can play it later, but I was thinking maybe we could go see a movie or something? Away from here?”
She shot another look at the front office. I got the feeling she wanted to go somewhere we wouldn’t be under the watchful eye of her mother.
"A movie?" I asked. "Like Netflix and chill?"
"What?" she asked.
I could’ve kicked myself. Netflix and chill. I needed to shut the fuck up with all these references from the future. It was difficult, though. Language is so much of the time a person lives in, and I was getting a crash course in how much English from the future was a foreign language with all the changes that’d taken place over the past couple of decades and all the new tech words that’d been added.
"Never mind," I said. “Watching a movie sounds fun. Like down at the local theater or something?"
I thought about a theater at the local mall that Aunt Olivia had pointed out to me. She'd talked about how she had some pretty good memories there despite the place being boarded up in my time. I wondered if I was about to make some nice memories at a movie place that’d be alive and well now.
“Something like that," she said with a grin. “Now come on. I’ll drive since you got dropped off. But we’ll have to leave your skates behind."
"Oh," I said as I suddenly realized that might create an awkward situation since my shoes were in the far future. "Oh shit.”
22
Ancient Relic
"I still can't believe they lost your shoes!" she said as the town streamed past us and ancient cars moved past on the other side of the road.
"Y
eah, that's funny isn't it?" I said.
I was in a pair of Jenny’s sandals. They were just a little too big, but whatever. They were also just a little too cold in the chilly weather, but I wasn't complaining.
No, I was more interested in getting a look at my town as it’d been in a time when it’d still been a place to be. If that makes sense.
The story in my time was decline. I always kind of felt like Captain Picard in that episode of Next Generation where he lives and becomes an old man in a memory being beamed into his bald dome by some alien probe sent by an alien civilization that was apparently powerful enough to send out probes that could catch up with Galaxy class starships, bust through their shields, and beam thoughts into the captain’s head, but not advanced enough to invent a fucking gravity tractor to move their planet farther away from their expanding sun.
Now there was a reference most people wouldn’t get. Especially people my age in my time. Not that it was a reference anyone around here was going to get either since I was pretty sure that episode hadn't even been produced yet.
The point was I'd always been surrounded by stuff that was going out of business. Crumbling. Falling apart because people didn't have the money or the time or the interest to do maintenance.
What I saw out the windows in the past, though? That was something completely different. It was my town, but it looked like a place people wanted to go and live and work and shop. Not a place full of check cashing businesses and dollar stores.
It was nothing like the burnt out husk of a manufacturing town that I grew up in. It was weird and kind of sad to see the place like this in its glory days, because I knew everything was going to go south in a few short years.
Not to mention I knew in the back of my head that what I was looking at wasn't anywhere close to the "glory days." No, I was looking at the beginning of the decline.
And even the so-called “glory days” hadn’t been all that great for everyone. I would’ve been run out of town even with my white skin, and don’t get me started on anyone with a slightly darker skintone. I wasn’t one of those people who looked at the past with rose-tinted glasses just because it’d been good for some people.
"You're looking at this place awfully intently," Jenny said.
"I am?"
"Like a tourist or something," Jenny said. “Only we don’t get tourists around here. It’s not like there are idiots who buy timeshares in this town or something.”
"Yeah," I said with a halfhearted laugh. "I guess it's just different looking at the place when someone else is driving."
Okay, so it was a pretty lame excuse. But it's not like I was going to admit I was the world's first time traveler.
Or probably not the world's first time traveler if time travel was as simple as walking into a dance studio at a roller rink that’d seen better days.
Either way I was a tourist, of sorts.
"Here we are," Jenny said.
"Here we are?" I asked.
I turned and stared at a place that was a Mexican restaurant in my time. This wasn’t a Mexican place though. No, this place had a giant sign featuring an ancient video tape and a reel of film. Two things that were pretty much obsolete where I came from.
"Jay's Video?" I said, not quite prepared for an actual video store in the wild.
"Well yeah," Jenny said. "Where else are you going to get a movie?"
I almost told her I got most of my movies from On-Demand like everyone else, but that thought died on my tongue. Jenny lived in a world without the bandwidth for On-Demand video. A world where movies were distributed in tiny analog hunks of plastic that Aunt Olivia had told me about. She'd even shown me an old VHS tape like it was an artifact from the distant past and she was Indiana Jones unearthing the thing.
And now it looked like I was going to get a more direct introduction to the things. A video store! Damn! Talk about when dinosaurs ruled the earth.
The first thing I noticed upon stepping through the door was a giant cutout of Arnold Schwarzenegger as the Terminator 2.
"Whoa," I said.
"What?" Jenny said. “Not a fan of bodybuilders turned action stars?”
“Are you kidding?” I asked. “That movie is a classic!”
“What are you talkin about?” Jenny asked. “It literally just came out on video.”
“Right,” I said. “Of course it did.
I cast about for a way to recover from that. It was ridiculous how easy it was to screw up when you didn’t live in the past and made mistakes based on stuff that everyone else took for granted.
“At least it isn't Sylvester Stallone on that stand, right?"
When I looked back to Jenny she was looking back at me in obvious confusion.
"Sylvester Stallone?" she asked. "Was he supposed to be in that movie or something?"
"Right," I said, recalling that it would still be a couple of years before Last Action Hero hit the theaters. I had to stop myself from grabbing the phone in my pocket to see exactly when it came out. For one it wouldn’t work, and two having a tiny high def screen in my pocket would probably raise more questions than they answered. "I guess you're not ready for that yet, but your kids are going to love it."
Which was totally true in addition to being an awesome quotable line from the great Michael J Fox. It seemed like the world wasn't quite ready for the meta-commentary that was Last Action Hero when it came out, even though it was a totally fucking awesome movie that totally deserved all the praise it could get. The critics from this day and age totally weren’t ready for the amount of meta.
"Right," Jenny said. "Do you always act this weird when you come to the video store?"
"I don't know," I said, and it was the honest truth since I’d never been in one before.
I turned and had a good look at the video store. I felt like an anthropologist visiting an ancient civilization. It was amazing how quick everything could change.
"This place is amazing," I said.
"It's just the video store," Jenny said.
The place wasn't at all like I'd expected from looking at shots of old Blockbusters. No, this place was dingy. Dust hung suspended in the air, no doubt kicked up from videos that hadn’t been rented in years, and ancient cardboard VHS boxes lined the walls. Not the neat rows of plastic DVD cases I saw in pictures of video stores from the ‘00s when they were in their death throes.
The different movies were arranged by section. I walked past rows and rows of movies I’d only heard of or maybe watched on YouTube or, more likely, Dailymotion since they were a lot better about not taking stuff down because of copyright claims.
Not that the people who made those movies probably thought that was a feature of that site, but as a teenager with no money I loved it.
"Oh my God," I said. “They actually have a copy of Rainbow Brite and the Star Stealer?"
“Um, are you okay?” Jenny asked.
I turned to her. There was something about her tone that said I’d just said something wrong. Sure the movie was garbage, but my mom had loved this stuff and she’d watched it with me over and over. It had a special nostalgic place in my heart, and I hadn’t been able to find the thing in years. Not since our old VHS stuff got lost when I moved to Aunt Olivia’s place.
“Why wouldn’t I be okay?” I asked.
“I don’t know many people who like that movie,” she said. “Like is that supposed to be a joke or something?”
“I have some good memories watching that movie with my mom,” I said, gazing down at the dark VHS cover and thinking of memories that hadn’t even happened yet from Jenny’s perspective.
For a surprise she grinned and reached down to grab a plastic tag on the front of the box. Come to think of it, the box my mom owned also had some scuff marks on it where someone might’ve taken a sticker off that was in about that same place. I wondered if my mom got her copy at a video store surplus sale or something.
“Rainbow Brite and Me is like a classic of the last decade,” s
he said, still grinning. “I just had to make sure you weren’t making fun of me or something.”
“Oh my God,” I said. “I’d never make fun of someone for loving Rainbow Brite, and I totally agree with you. That’s like the best ‘80s style pop song to come out of the last two decades.”
“You mean the last five years,” she said, leaning in and kissing me. “The ‘80s just ended, after all.”
“Um, right,” I said.
Again I felt like I’d given something up. She was hitting me with a weird look, but she also wasn’t saying anything.
“Come on,” she said. “This is a good movie, but we’ll need a double feature if this is going to be a proper date night!”
23
VHS and Chill
“Okay, so I’m willing to admit that you were totally right about that one,” Jenny said.
We were on a couch in her parents’ basement. It was a totally weird experience. I’d heard people make fun of the whole wood paneling and shag carpet aesthetic that still hung on in basements and rec rooms well into the ‘80s, but I’d never actually been in a house that used that aesthetic.
“I told you Dream Warriors would be a better horror experience than Friday the 13th Part VII,” I said.
“I mean part VI wasn’t bad,” Jenny said.
“Yeah, but that one is basically Jason vs Carrie, and censors cut all the good stuff,” I said.
“Huh,” she said. “How do you know that?”
I almost told her the Internet, but again I stopped myself before giving that away.
“Um, horror magazines,” I muttered.
Those were a thing back in the day, right? She nodded, so what I said must’ve made some sense.
When Jenny said she wanted to watch something scary and had gone for the latest in the Friday the 13th series, at least the latest available on home video, I’d nearly had a heart attack. I liked her, but I wasn’t sure I liked her enough to sit through that steaming pile.
